This is comparing Visa's use of energy to Bitcoin's. It is not comparing Visa's use of all resources to Bitcoin's. It is like saying hybrid cars are more efficient than electric or gas cars, because they use less electricity than fully-electric cars and less gas than ICEs.
It is comparing the energy consumed by Visa to the energy consumed by Bitcoin. If you want to get into other resources e.g. supply chains for all the computing hardware used by Visa versus Bitcoin...is there any reason to think Bitcoin would do better here? Mining operations have become enormous, thousands of machines all churning away, and there are many such operations. I suspect Visa has a smaller footprint here as well.
So you're telling me that Bitcoin can make up ground for being almost a million times less efficient on a basic and everyday use case of currency in some other way? Please, go ahead and tell me. That's like saying you have the fastest drive thru hamburger shop even though it takes an hour for someone to get their food. But the burger joint is faster "elsewhere". Where else could Bitcoin make up the energy efficiency problem? Especially efficiency where it actually matters.
Does VISA create and secure an asset that is open source, decentralized, censorship resistant, permissionless to participate in?
Apples to oranges. VISA can't do those things, it is a centralized settlement layer for US Dollar transactions. So when we selectively compare the transactions per energy metric, we are conveniently ignoring the fact that VISA is not responsible for securing the stability of the global US Dollar network.
And... does any of those addons actually matter? I have yet to see why the average person should care. If I was a drug dealer or trying to side step customs or hiding wealth in general, dude, I'm going crypto. But I do none of that. It's just extra layers of hassle for me to go buy a bottle of rum, pack of chicken breasts, and pay for my electric bill.
There was an article on HN regarding money laundering in the past week. Lots of people were surprised and denounced how easy it is to launder money... so... with Bitcoin's features making it a beautiful means of money laundering... if it becomes truly adopted as a currency, those features are going to go bye-bye. Stealing bitcoin hasn't been rare either. Search engine of choice look up, "bitcoin stolen". It doesn't really seem that much better that current systems. There's always a way to steal from someone. That xkcd comic on security makes a good joke on it. The best hash doesn't protect you from someone hitting you with a $5 wrench.
So what visa isnt responsible for securing the stability of the dollar? Who in their right mind thinks they are responsible for shit other than skimming off the top when communicating between two banks? Seriously? You think a mainstream bitcoin transaction service is going to be a non-profit? Visa is simply part of the network. If they go down, there are other services that still function. Best part, if all telecom goes down, paper money still works. Crypto doesn't. Anything that affects visa, Mastercard or any other high or low level merchant service, affects crypto too. Generally, crypto is just another merchant service using it's own chucky cheese tokens instead of an multi organization agreed upon one.
Most of the "benefits" are either rare, extremely niche or just brute forcing a wall that just requires stepping around it.
Feel free to look through my comment history to see some of my arguments against fiat currency and federal reserve. I don’t think you’re familiar enough with the economics, the ideas of hard money/soft money and hyperinflation.
